Trump GETS EXPOSED during trial, CRIMINAL CHARGES could be NEXT
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00:00 only she can under a giant monopoly board to take all of Donald Trump's money, buildings,
00:06 houses, and reputation. But there's another part of that statute of the executive law in New York,
00:13 63-3. We don't talk a lot about it, but it's in the news now because there's new reporting coming
00:20 out of the Daily Beast that internally in November of 2020 there were serious discussions by the New
00:27 York Attorney General not just to bring a civil fraud case, a persistent fraud case under 63-12,
00:36 but to go for the jugular and once and for all go after Donald Trump, his children, Ivanka, Eric,
00:44 and Don Jr., and at least Rudy Giuliani for racketeering or what we call in New York
00:52 enterprise corruption. It's exactly what it sounds like, an enterprise who looks like a
00:58 legitimate business from the outside but on the inside is just a criminal enterprise. We call that
01:04 enterprise corruption. And that, if you now with that lens that there was serious consideration,
01:11 even a memo being written by one of the lead investigators within the Attorney General's
01:18 office suggesting that there was another way to put together these puzzle pieces,
01:24 one way to put together the puzzle pieces of business record fraud, insurance fraud,
01:29 money laundering, and tax fraud was to put it under the rubric of a 63-12 persistent fraud case.
01:37 That's what we've been watching for the last five weeks in New York. That is the stand-alone
01:44 persistent fraud claim, which doesn't require intent. You can accidentally commit persistent
01:49 fraud. It gives the New York Attorney General, since 1956, tremendous powers to shut down once
01:56 and for all criminal business enterprises under a civil standard, in this case, preponderance of the
02:04 evidence, meaning she doesn't have to prove her case to Judge Angoran beyond a reasonable doubt
02:09 like a prosecutor. She gets the lower standard of it just tips the scales ever so slightly in
02:14 her favor. That's an advantage, one of the many advantages to the New York Attorney General.
02:19 But there's another way to read all of the allegations and all of the counts
02:23 that have been brought. There's seven total counts in the current, I almost said indictment,
02:29 it reads like an indictment. That's the thing. It's a petition or a civil complaint that they've
02:34 been litigating this last year and for the last five weeks in trial with all these witnesses.
02:40 But if you read it through a different lens, if you reassemble the puzzle a different way,
02:44 you get a different image. And now if you just read it as a criminal indictment, it all becomes
02:50 clear. Some people would say to me, "Popok," sometimes they call me Popok, "Popok, I looked
02:57 at the six counts, the seven in total for these fraud, civil fraud claims. Aren't each one of
03:03 those counts against Donald Trump and the Trump organizations and the Trumpers, aren't they also
03:09 crimes in the state of New York? You're a New York lawyer. What do you think, Popok?" The answer is
03:13 yes, they are. They are crimes. That's why we have to bite our tongue when we talk about the
03:20 civil fraud case because it's so close to being a criminal fraud case. And now we know from the
03:25 reporting of the Daily Beast how close it actually is and how close it could actually be in the
03:30 future. Because the way to put the stake through the heart of Donald Trump's organization, to kill
03:36 the vampire once and for all, is to not only just take all of his money, buildings, and business
03:42 reputation, like I said, like a monopoly board, but is to put people in jail as a result under
03:48 enterprise corruption. And the enterprise corruption is not a tremendous leap. In fact,
03:55 you wouldn't even have to do much to the current civil complaint at all to render it into an
04:01 indictment. You just have to take that evidence that you're using and putting up in front of
04:06 Judge Angouran and go take it into a grand jury, a criminal grand jury in New York. The testimony
04:13 of, and you have all the testimony, Eric Trump's testimony, Don Jr.'s testimony, soon to be Ivanka's
04:19 testimony, Donald Trump's testimony. You have it all, right? They all waved or gonna wave their
04:25 Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. You take all of that in, the testimony of the
04:30 other Trump insiders, money people, control officers, some of them being convicted felons
04:35 already, like the chief financial officer for Trump organization. You bring that in front of a
04:40 grand jury, you bring the documents and the fraud documents and the tax fraud documents
04:46 and all of that. And what do you walk out with? The same thing Fonny Willis in Fulton County
04:51 walked out with in Georgia about the election case, an indictment. So why hasn't it happened? Well,
04:57 there's always a little bit of a tension between, it's like a turf war between agencies and
05:04 prosecutorial agencies. There just is. I'm dealing with cases right now where there's a turf war,
05:09 EDNY, New York Attorney General, Securities and Exchange Commission, U.S. Attorney's Office.
05:14 I've dealt with many cases in which that group, those groups don't necessarily get along. They
05:20 got different budgets, they got different agendas, they got different bosses, and each want a piece
05:25 of the pie. And by pie, I mean your defendant. So now you have all of these competing interests
05:34 coming to a head in New York between the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, which is the chief
05:39 prosecutor for Manhattan or New York borough, and the New York Attorney General, which is the chief
05:44 legal officer for the entire state. Her ability though to go after things criminally is limited
05:50 by the governor. We're back to what I started this hot take with, 63-3. 63-3 is the way that
05:58 a person like Letitia James can ask the governor or the governor can ask her to investigate crime.
06:07 Otherwise, it's left state by state to each local county prosecutor or district attorney.
06:15 But there are exceptions. So 63-3, and I'll read it for you, gives the powers of the attorney
06:20 general. And the third power, if you will, is upon request of the governor, the controller,
06:27 the secretary of state, and the commissioner or superintendent of financial services,
06:32 the commissioner of taxation and finance, or the state inspector general, any of those.
06:39 And we know the state inspector general here on the Midas Touch Network. She's a friend of the pod,
06:44 if you will. We've had her on the show when she was running for the Manhattan district attorney's
06:49 office. If any one of those, not all of those, if any one of those entities, starting with the
06:53 governor, can request that the attorney general investigate, quote, "the alleged commission of
07:01 an indictable offense or offenses in violation of the law, which the officer making the request is
07:07 especially required to execute or in relation to any matters connected with such department,"
07:13 right? "Or prosecute the person or persons believed to have committed the same and any
07:18 crime or offense arising out of such investigation or prosecution." Let me put it in English.
07:24 The governor, inspector general, the financial services commissioner can give as a new billet,
07:32 as a new remit, a mandate to the attorney general to go after the Trump organization,
07:37 the Trump family, as a crime family, as an enterprise-corrupted enterprise, as an
07:44 enterprise-corruption family. That has to come from one of those groups.
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09:57 your fitness goals. Now, currently those groups are under the control of Governor Halkool.
10:04 Governor Halkool took over for Governor Cuomo. One of the reportings of the Daily Beast is that
10:09 Governor Cuomo put the kibosh on the New York Attorney General going after certain aspects
10:15 of the Trump organization. I don't have more reporting on that. I don't know why
10:19 Cuomo was so interested in protecting Donald Trump, but he didn't give the green light to
10:25 the New York Attorney General despite the memo. Now that memo, which also argued in chilling,
10:30 prophetic observations, the following quote I took out of the reporting on the memo. This is
10:39 from the New York Attorney General, one of the investigators, one of the attorneys there.
10:44 "Absence of any prosecutorial action poses a high risk of additional major criminal activity."
10:52 This is by Trump. "And existential threat level attempts to corrupt the federal and state
11:00 governments." This was written in November of 2020. Think about what a crystal ball this person had
11:08 in predicting the future. That if you didn't shut down Donald Trump now, one prosecutor with a
11:13 silver bullet didn't go after Donald Trump to try to take them out of being an enterprise corruption
11:20 business enterprise and shut them down once and for all and send people to jail as a result,
11:25 it could pose a quote "existential threat level attempt to corrupt the federal and state
11:32 governments" if you don't take this person off the street. So why did it happen? Because
11:39 the reporting is the Manhattan DA at the time was transitioning from Cy Vance to now Alvin Bragg,
11:45 and during that interstitial moment, frankly, none or neither of them really wanted to pursue
11:50 this issue. Instead, it kind of broke off and spun off into little sub-investigations.
11:56 It ultimately culminated in the Stormy Daniels hush money cover-up indictment by
12:04 the Manhattan DA and the 17 count felony conviction of the Trump Organization for tax evasion. So it
12:11 sort of spun off into little sub-cases like Allen Weisselberg, the CFO, was prosecuted and convicted
12:17 tax evasion. Trump Organization, prosecuted, convicted, tax evasion. Stormy Daniels hush
12:24 money cover-up, that'll be in March, a likely conviction. And then the New York Attorney
12:30 General civil fraud case. So this overarching grand indictment that I just described for
12:36 racketeering, right, for racketeering with two predicate underlying acts and an enterprise
12:43 objective of corruption, which could have been tried in one box, got divided up into all these
12:49 other things. And we're seeing the results of them now, right? The civil fraud case is a result of
12:54 that now. Question for this hot take is, will the Manhattan DA and/or the current governor,
13:02 democratically, Democratic Governor Hochul, give the New York Attorney General the license,
13:10 the permission, the instruction to pursue these crimes and not just the civil side of the matter?
13:17 Yes, taking away all of his money and buildings for Donald Trump, very important. And that you
13:23 can do civilly and you can't do it criminally. But criminal restitution, criminal charges,
13:29 and criminal convictions leading to prison sentences, that's the home run. That's the
13:34 grand slam home run. So the question is, will the Manhattan DA take it on? We don't have to
13:40 worry right now about a statute of limitations. All these things should fit neatly within a current
13:44 statute of limitations. Or will the New York Attorney General, on the backs of hopefully a
13:50 win here, which we'll know about in early December, in the civil fraud case, then say, "You know what
13:56 I'm going after next? Criminal." Of course, she needs the governor or one of these other offices
14:01 that has jurisdiction, if you will, over Donald Trump to step in and actually give her the
14:06 instruction. A lot of states are different. Some people might be thinking, especially from around
14:10 the world, "Why can't the Attorney General do it on their own? Isn't that what they do?"
14:15 Not in New York. In New York, the State House gave the New York Attorney General back in 1956
14:21 tremendous powers to investigate corruption and fraud under 63-12, but held back the reins on
14:28 giving them a lot of criminal investigatory powers, leaving it kind of devolved down to the
14:35 local prosecutors, the district attorneys, to handle the day-to-day criminal investigations
14:41 and prosecutions. We'll continue to follow, I think, really interesting matters at the intersection
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15:24 until my next hot take, until my next Legal AF, this is Michael Popock reporting.
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